Chapter 5

We were sitting before a little fire inside a safe grotto one
night shortly after we had quit the cliff-dwellings of the
Band-lu, when So-al raised a question which it had never
occurred to me to propound to Ajor. She asked her why she had
left her own people and how she had come so far south as the
country of the Alus, where I had found her.

At first Ajor hesitated to explain; but at last she consented,
and for the first time I heard the complete story of her origin
and experiences. For my benefit she entered into greater
detail of explanation than would have been necessary had I been
a native Caspakian.

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"I am a cos-ata-lo," commenced Ajor, and then she turned
toward me. "A cos-ata-lo, my Tom, is a woman" (lo)
"who did not come from an egg and thus on up from the beginning."
(Cor sva jo.) "I was a babe at my mother's breast. Only among
the Galus are such, and then but infrequently. The Wieroo get
most of us; but my mother hid me until I had attained such size
that the Wieroo could not readily distinguish me from one who
had come up from the beginning. I knew both my mother and my
father, as only such as I may. My father is high chief among
the Galus. His name is Jor, and both he and my mother came up
from the beginning; but one of them, probably my mother, had
completed the seven cycles" (approximately seven hundred years),
"with the result that their offspring might be cos-ata-lo,
or born as are all the children of your race, my Tom, as you
tell me is the fact. I was therefore apart from my fellows in
that my children would probably be as I, of a higher state of
evolution, and so I was sought by the men of my people; but
none of them appealed to me. I cared for none. The most
persistent was Du-seen, a huge warrior of whom my father stood
in considerable fear, since it was quite possible that Du-seen
could wrest from him his chieftainship of the Galus. He has a
large following of the newer Galus, those most recently come up
from the Kro-lu, and as this class is usually much more
powerful numerically than the older Galus, and as Du-seen's
ambition knows no bounds, we have for a long time been
expecting him to find some excuse for a break with Jor the High
Chief, my father.

"A further complication lay in the fact that Duseen wanted me,
while I would have none of him, and then came evidence to my
father's ears that he was in league with the Wieroo; a hunter,
returning late at night, came trembling to my father, saying
that he had seen Du-seen talking with a Wieroo in a lonely spot
far from the village, and that plainly he had heard the words:
`If you will help me, I will help you--I will deliver into your
hands all cos-ata-lo among the Galus, now and hereafter;
but for that service you must slay Jor the High Chief and bring
terror and confusion to his followers.'